Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Cube Card Spotlight: Worldknit

Welcome back for another episode of Cube Card spotlight. I'm your host, Plaid Magic and today we'll be discussing a card you can't even put in your deck

Worldknit

Conspiracy

Rules Text:

(Start the game with this conspiracy face up in the command zone.) As long as every card in your card pool started the game in your library or in the command zone, lands you control have "Tap: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool."

Synopsis

The Rundown:

A draft manipulator extraordinaire. If this comes out in pack three of a draft, it's probably a dead card. If you get this pack one, this is the definition of a build around me. You need to actually play with ALL of the cards you drafted, but your lands can be tapped for any color mana.

Enables multi-color interactions that might not be possible outside of this card

Basically unremovable effect

Collective Cons:

Must play with all cards drafted

Close to a dead card in pack 3

Warps drafts, good cards that might otherwise wheel may not, affecting other strategies

Swap/Compare

Chromatic Lantern

Prismatic Omen

Joiner Adept

Verdict: Incredibly unique draft and format warping skill intensive "card". Experiences of this card in cube range from amazing to toxic. The general consensus is that if you run conspiracies in your cube, try it out, if only for a short time

The Discussion

flclreddiI encourage every person that likes conspiracies / wonky / powered cards to try this in a draft at least once. It is a crazy good feeling to be able to draft any cards you want, and the best cards, without color restriction.That said, I think that anyone with half a brain that P1P1's Worldknit should win almost every one of their games, provided they draft correctly.It is a toxic card for cubes. You take it early and try to make it work. There are a few things that result from this:1) You pick the best card in every pack. This means that on average, you win games because the quality of your cards are just straight up better than the quality of your opponent's cards, with relatively few exceptions.2) In the event that the cards aren't spectacular, you just default to picking lands. This makes your deck more efficient, and makes everyone else's decks more inefficient, without needing to know what colors people are going.3) You end up with 2-3 bad cards per pack on average, but with a carefully constructed curve of awesomeness, it doesn't really matter.4) It takes the fun out of the drafting process, not only for you by making every decision a pretty easy one, but by weakening the card pool for literally everyone that isn't you.I recently put Worldknit into my cube as a filler spot and test card, and one of my friends picked it up in the middle of pack 2. Even that late, he was able to make it work, grabbing leftover cards that were extremely powerful but too color intensive for others to play [stuff like Necropotence and some hybrid cards]. He said it was one of the most fun drafts he has ever had, but there were a number of cards in his deck that I figured would have tabled because of color restrictions but didn't. It really messes with predicting what will come back around to you.End Verdict - test it out if you like, but if you're serious about a traditional cubing experience, I'd stay away from this and other conspiracies.

FlemePretty much what I wanted to say, but more eloquently put. I agree with everything except the final verdict of not including other conspiracies. I feel that Power Play and Backup Plan (that I both run, and have for months now) are both fine. They're powerful for sure and they're usually high in the pick order but the decks running those have also never won a draft (I've kept track) so I've decided to keep them.

hubayGoing to go on a slightly surprised rant here: backup plan decks have never won a draft? I have to say I'm very skeptical. It's not an auto-win by any means, but in my group's power cube the consensus is you pick it over sol ring or lotus. The card is absurd.It probably decreases in value as the power level of your cube decreases, sure. But in power cube it gives you stupid, stupid draws. Storm, twin combo, tezzerator nonsense, channel decks all become dangerously consistent. Aggro decks don't have to worry about flood. multi color goodstuff or control decks can hit the right curve.

FlemeI've kept track. Those decks have gone 2-1 but have literally never won a draft in the 20~ some drafts I've done (not all have had Backup Plan obviously, being 720 after all).I can see it being absolutely broken in 360 powered, but for 720 unpowered it has not been so good as to warrant removing it although I've considered removing the conspiracy cards to free up some colorless space but never because they've been too good.

hubayGotcha - I can definitely see that making a big difference in how broken it is.

FannyBabbsThanks for the discussion on Worldknit. Somebody recently told me it was pants-on-head broken in cube and I just couldn't see it. 5 Color goodstuff decks just aren't that degenerate in my experience. It never occurred to me to hate-draft lands to lower your amount of durdle-picks and have an actual deck.That being said, I think ruining the actual draft environment is the more crucial reason I would never run this card. If you are drafting with 8 people, sure it probably doesn't derail things badly enough, but I regularly draft with 4-5 and even one person fucking around can really trash signals for the rest of us.

SocksofGranduerAre you kidding? If I drafted this card, I would be drafting every dual I could find. The biggest drawback of worldknit is that you have to run every card you draft. The best way to help mitigate that restriction is to draft as many non spell cards as humanly possible to keep your total count low.

ScottRadishThis is the problem with this card. The correct stategy is to draft as many lands as possible. I've seen Worldknit decks running as little as 51 cards. The deck becomes super consistant, and everybody else is left without fixing.

CrazyMike366I think it's at its most interesting in a large cube where you can't predict whether or not it'll show up and in less powerful cubes where synergy and archetypes are at a premium.

wox1510This card is a trap.The downside of having to play sideboard cards and last picks really dilute the threat density of your deck. To have any kind of consistency, you need to draft a ton of non-basic lands to keep your card count respectable, and once you have all those lands, you don't need world knit anymore.The way to make it work is to take it early, and then take ALL THE PLANESWALKERS!! This is the only situation I've seen where the worldknit deck is stronger than a 40 card deck from the same pool.Last thing to remember during draft: just because you took it doesn't mean you have to play it.Edit: I guess that was Wox the player talking. Wox the cube owner says that if enough people in your playgroup want to make it work, then it can go in pretty much any cube. It does need a ton of nonbasics to be most effective, so make sure your cube has them. It works quite well with Strip Mine and Maze of Ith

C0L0NEL_ANGUSI have nothing constructive to add because I've never played with this card. But I will say though, I think it looks like a lot fun if you pick it very early...

FlemeI feel like it skews the draft too much to be an actually good card to cube. First, you're either stuck with a 70~ card deck or you're drafting all the lands which nullifies the fact that your lands are already producing all the colors. Either way you're in a trap - you choose between lower quality cards since you're prioritizing picking all the lands to cut your deck size down or alternatively you're picking all the midrange goodness you can get your hands on and sacrificing consistency by having a huge deck.Add to that the fact that the Worldknit player, whatever approach they choose, is actively screwing every other drafter by either taking cards from all decks that people send wheeling and would be likely to wheel if it wasn't for the 5-color goodstuff guy or alternatively they're ruining everyone elses draft by taking all the lands to bring their deck size down.Either way it seems that the inclusion of this card serves nothing but to ruin the drafting experience for the whole table and as such I would never include it in cube unless it's specifically a conspiracy cube (I have no issue with conspiracies otherwise and do run 2 myself as well as some conspiracy cards).I've also heard of house rules where one can draft Worldknit and play it with a 40 card deck which straight up makes it more busted than Sol Ring, and coming from me that's saying a lot.

silaswI think there's a lot to be discussed about Worldknit. Some people think it's too powerful, some people think it ruins the draft. I still like it, but I'm willing to be swayed to the other side.First of all, the power level of Worldknit depends heavily on the composition of the cube. The more narrow cards there are in the cube, the worse it gets. It's interesting to see Worldknit players get stuck with dedicated aggro cards and dedicated control cards in the same deck. Also, people will say that it's best to take as many lands as possible; that depends on the strength of the mana fixing in the cube. Shocklands, for example, are worse than basics for the Worldknit player.People who play Worldknit decks usually say it's fun, but it's also basically easy mode. However I disagree with the argument that it screws up the draft for everyone else. Drafting is only interesting when there's some overlap between the cards different players want. If each player has a color to him/herself, the draft is totally uninteresting. Worldknit ensures that at least one player overlaps with every other player.In the past, I've found that Worldknit decks perform about average, maybe a bit above average. I look forward to testing it more.

transcensionistThis has really underperformed in my group. Even decks that drafted a ton of lands to compensate the total cards in the deck struggled to do well. And our guy that wins nearly every week tanked when he tried the worldknit deck. I see the potential, sure, but compared to just drafting a 40 card synergy deck this seems much harder to pull off.

ErikulumWorldknit is a fun card... but quickly gets old, is a dead card when not opened in the first pack and, like others explained, negatively affect the drafting experience.That said, I'd recommend adding it to your cube, if you haven't already tried it, it's fun for a while.

americanextremeThis card is highly skill testing. Bad drafters will miss evaluate what they need and have a very bad decks. Excellent drafters can have a power level and consistency that has never been seen. I particularly like this card because it forces the play of cards that might not otherwise be seen. And the combinations of cards can be really weird but funny.